Sunday, April 08, 2012

Retracing the Titanic's Wake (reporting by Nevada Jack)

Nevada Jack

On April 10th, 1912, the Titanic set sail. 100 years and two day later the Balmoral is setting out to follow the Titanic’s wake, with the same number of passengers and hopefully a few more lifeboats. Retracing the Titanic’s route was the mastermind of a morbid travel agent who had planned to hire a Greek shipping firm with a record of fatal voyages that was more than willing to partner with his scheme. "The Titanic is so yesterday," according to Miles Morgan. "Think of the number of movies made about the ship. This cruise will serve the cinema industry for another century. Furthermore, there will be boom to the songwriters everywhere. After all, we’ve all heard that song about some iron freighter named for some unheard of Irishman till we puked.”

Unfortunately, the Greek shipping company connection fell through as all their ships were prematurely out of commission, having ran aground and flipped over or suffered from an on board fires. In the end, the Fred Olsen Cruise Line (which sounds like they should operate a dance studio), provided the Balmoral for the memorial event. The ship, despite being a hundred years newer than the Titanic, had to set sail two days earlier because it’s slower! So much for technology.

In other cruising news, Miles Morgan had planned to offer a reenactment of the clash between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (known by Yankees as the Merrimack) on the 150th anniversary of their battle of March 9, 1862, but plans were scratched when he couldn’t find appropriate ships. “This is the perfect battle for a reenactment,” according to Morgan. “No one died; they just had massive headaches as the shells bounced off their iron.” Morgan had planned to offer his passengers free aspirin, which wasn’t available at the time of the battle. Having missed the date for the Monitor and Virginia showdown, Morgan is checking into a possible re-sailing of the Confederate submarine Huntley, which sank on February 16, 1864 (along with its victim) in Charleston harbor.

South Haven (MI) lighthouse

The above photo has nothing to do with the Titanic or a Civil War battle, but I was there on Saturday and decided to post it with Nevada Jack's story.

6 comments:

In fairness, the puking was self inflicted.They are making a big touristic thing about the Titanic up in Belfast. Big museum, tours and what-have-ya. I think it a mistake You don't want your town known for that kind of stuff. Bad enough that a generation will associate Belfast with the oh so very recent unpleasantness. But there are people in their 30s that don't make that connection.Me, I think they should have left her well alone to her disintegration at 14000ft. What good has it done to have rich gobshites paying a fortune to descend when people are starving in whatever city they derived their wealth. Are they making it easier for a rescue a la the Kursk. Nope, for there are no hatches to open at that depth.

The reason the new ship had to leave two days early is political correctness gone amuck. They took out the massive gas guzzling engines and replaces them with fuel sipping 4 cylinders with variable cylinder management technology and a D cell battery backup!

I can't think who in their right mind would want to get on a ship that has a history of wrecks, like that Greek firm's ship(s). :) Maybe the Balmoral will make for a safer journey because it is slower. Hmmm...

Musings

This blog contains observations on life and nature written by Sage, satire and parody written by Nevada Jack, and an occasional book review or poem. As a general rule, the author of the blog doesn't write about his work or his family. Email at sagecoveredhills [at] gmail.com